Fred Taylor vents about contract status

Jaguars "waiting for my hourglass to run out," says veteran tailback.

Talk of Tiki Barber's decision to retire after the season quickly turned into a vent-fest for Jaguars running back Fred Taylor, who has nearly two seasons remaining on his current contract.

"I love what Tiki is doing," Taylor said on Friday. "He's getting out on top. He's a really intelligent guy and he's got lots of other avenues to pursue once he's done playing."

Taylor says he's thinking along the same retirement lines as Barber, the New York Giants running back. Especially when pondering his current situation with the Jaguars. With approximately two years left on an incentive-laden contract, Taylor wants to restructure.

Taylor and agent Drew Rosenhaus approached the Jaguars before training camp to talk about a new contract, then again last week during the club's bye week.

Rosenhaus declined comment when reached on Friday, but Taylor didn't hesitate to voice his thoughts, which included the possibility of retiring.

"It's crossed my mind, the more and more things are taken away from me, like playing time," Taylor said. "You exert so much energy into one cause and it's not reciprocated. It's like putting money into an ATM machine. You keep putting money in, but every time you use your card, it says insufficient funds.

"At some point, you're going to quit putting money into it."

Paul Vance, the Jaguars senior vice president of football operations, declined comment when reached on Friday.

"I think Fred felt he would like to talk about a contract," Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver said back in July. "We still have a number of years left on Fred's contract [which expires in 2008], and we felt the timing wasn't right [for a new deal]."

Injuries have damaged Taylor's bid for a new contract. He tore two ligaments in his left knee in 2004, missing the final two games of that season before sitting out five games in 2005 with an ankle injury. He finished the '05 season with 787 yards, the second lowest of his career.

Through five games this season, Taylor is eighth in the AFC in rushing (367 yards). He ranks No. 5 in career yardage (8,734 yards) among active running backs. Yet Taylor's rushing numbers have diminished somewhat this season, in part because of the emergence of rookie running back Maurice Drew.

"Let me say that I'm fine with the rotation system," Taylor said. "But I've got incentives [in my contract]. How can I reach them when you're cutting my playing time? I start thinking about little things like that when I see other guys around the league with the same numbers as me, but they don't have to earn their money through incentives."

Taylor's incentive-heavy contract includes him receiving $40,000 for each game he dresses, which cost him $200,000 last season because he missed five games. He also receives $140,000 for reaching 1,300 yards and another $140,000 for each 100 yards after that, up to 1,600.

"We're just asking to turn the incentives into real money," Taylor said. "It's killing me. That makes me think of wanting to be traded or to retire. It's one or the other. I guarantee that if Greg [Jones, who suffered a season-ending injury] was here, I would've been on the [trading] block."

Taylor points to his statistics over the past five years (5,013 yards) when explaining his desire for a new deal, saying "the numbers don't lie." From 2002 to 2006, Taylor ranks fifth among NFL running backs (behind Barber, LaDainian Tomlinson, Shaun Alexander and Clinton Portis) in carries of 10 or more yards (148). Yet he has missed seven games over that period while the other backs, combined, have missed the same amount of time.

"I'm a competitor, that's my nature," Taylor said. "But how many people do you know that will come out and get broke[n] up for free? My agent told me not to talk about this kind of stuff with the media. But that's just the way I feel.''

Taylor said his contract situation has been "eating" at him for more than a year. He likens the current situation in the Jags backfield - sharing carries with Drew - to the quarterback controversy involving Byron Leftwich and Mark Brunell back in 2003.

"They're waiting for my hourglass to run out then they'll just get rid of me," Taylor said. "Don't get me wrong, Maurice is a great player. But at the same time, this feels like Mark [Brunell] and Byron's [situation]. That's not to say that Byron hasn't proven that he deserves to be where he is, because he has."

"I'm the perfect teammate," Taylor added. "But at the end of the day, I don't think it's being reciprocated. They've got the upper hand; I understand the business side of it. This has just been on my chest for the last year. That's how I feel."